Hillary Watch IV

Reading a lot of essays like This one lately:

She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals -- whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband's serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man. For sixteen years, I was a proud soldier in the legion of "Clinton apologists" -- who believed that peace and prosperity were more important than regrettable personality traits.

And then she ran for president.

Then:

She accused Mr. Obama of his own shady business deals (the irony of which nearly ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time). She accused him of being two-faced on NAFTA, when it was her campaign that had winked at the Canadians. She demanded that he "reject" the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, but remained silent when Rush Limbaugh stirred up votes for her in Texas. And she crafted the now-infamous "3am" attack ad -- which used scare tactics to highlight Senator Obama's perceived lack of experience in foreign affairs. Straight out of the ol' Atwater/Rove playbook. Of course, all of this paled in comparison to her husband's patronizing, racially insensitive comments earlier in the primary season.

Was this the same Hillary Clinton whose husband ran on the idea that hope was more powerful than fear? The wife of a president who had less foreign policy experience than Barack Obama when he was elected? And exactly which crisis is she referring to when she claims to have more experience? And while we're at it, where the hell are those tax returns?

It's clear that Hillary's back in this thing, at least for the time being. But at what cost? Short of some cataclysmic event, there's no way either she or Mr. Obama can reach 2,025 delegates in the remaining contests. That means she's accepted the inevitability of a brokered convention. A convention she'll almost certainly enter with fewer delegates than her opponent. That raises some important questions:

Will she subvert the will of the voters? Will she turn Denver into a series of shady back-room deals and arm twisting? Will she dispatch her husband to pressure superdelegates into switching allegiances at the last minute? Are we in for, as one pundit put it, a good ol' fashioned "knife fight?"

For these answers and more, tune in next week, when we'll hear the Clintons claim once again that, Oh, of course it's an honor to run against the inexperienced, Muslim, drug-dealing, Farrakhan-embracing, NAFTA-fibbing, shady land-deal-profiting Barack Hussein Obama.

Which only leaves us with one additional question.

When does the statute of limitations run out on describing the Clintons' tactics as from the Atwater/Rove playbook?

The Democratic convention is in six months. To give you a sense of how long that is, consider that it was six months ago that Fred Thompson announced for the presidency.

Would six more months of all of the above convince at least the Apologists Emeriti that these Clinton tactics are theirs, always and forever, that their behavior can no longer be blamed on nor traced to Ken Starr or Newt or Rove or Atwater, any more than the exhaust from my new Ford Edge causes floodwaters in Bali-Bali?

Hillary: How Low?

The invaluable Irish Trojan spots this from New Republic's Jonathan Chait. Chait, an unreconstructed Democrat (hence Clintonite), writes:

All politicians, including Obama, spin. But the way the Clinton campaign says night is day is just especially audacious. ... I think Obama and his staff say things they at least believe to be essentially true. Working for Clinton has to be a soul-deadening experience.

The Irish Trojan (aka Brendan Loy) continues:

Chait is echoing Josh Marshall, who wrote last month that "good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. ... But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp 'spins' on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense."

On the basis of what I read, I wrote the following on his comments page:

Message from Republicans to Jonathan Chait:

So now you know. Only took 18 years, smart guy.

Then I went back, to Chait's entire entry, and wrote the following:

On second thought, Brendan, I went to the link and think you ellipsied out the sentence where Chait once again resumes the role of Clinton enabler:

"It's as if they have internalized the attacks they suffered in the 1990s to such a degree that they believe to their core that the only way to win is to imitate their worst tormentors."

Newt made 'em do it! Ken Starr made 'em do it!

And understand the Chait's implication here: that the current black-is-white (or, in the case of Obama, black-is-blacker) behavior of Mr. and Mrs. Snope from Hope is somehow new.

Chait's sub thesis: Oh, they were NEVER like this when I loved them.

The GOP's best chance this fall is a Dem train wreck. That may not be enough, especially if Obama makes inroads in the South. (Without the Confederacy's 160 electoral votes, McCain is sunk.) But the Dems have been known to affect such a wreck.

Clinton romps in OH, wins in TX

So:

Astro-Girl and I go out to the caucus, and come home to a world on fire.

Okay, not really.

But the next few months, watching the Dems, are going to be fun.

But for now, some news:

We're Republican delegates. To the Senate county convention, anyway.

It happened like this.

Our precinct is allowed 21 delegates to our county convention. On the way to our caucus, I specfically cut north two blocks out of our way, to Westheimer Boulevard, in order to pass between two Democatic Cauci.

As I wrote below, Astro-Girl and I live near the seam of two Houston neighborhoods, with us in Upper Kirby, which is south of River Oaks, the home of our city's millionaires and billionaires: oil CEOs, old-monied barons and world-famous heart surgeons. (One burning-hot summer Sunday afternoon, while jogging up an otherwise abandoned River Oaks Boulevard, the half-mile strip of mansions between Lamar High School and the River Oaks Country Club, I happened upon a man out by himself for a solitary Sunday stroll, who smiled and said hello as our paths crossed. Ken Lay.) Running from Weslayan east to Kirby Boulevard, Westheimer Boulevard is the dividing line between the two neighborhoods--and, at opposite sides of Westheimer and River Oaks, facing across the street from one another, sat the two Dem caucus sites. The River Oaks precinct was St. John's Church, on the northwest side of the intersection; Upper Kirby was in Lamar High School, on the south side, and as we passed on Westheimer between the two precincts, I marveled at the traffic, at the spilling-over parking lots and the long, long lines to enter, as if for (on the one hand) Midnight Mass and (on the other) a high school basketball playoff game.

We drove down to the GOP Upper Kirby Caucus, which was held in a boardroom that served as a kind of storefront. This had been the same room in which Astro-Girl and I had voted five hours earlier; I had assumed that, come the evening, the voting machines would be carried out to make room for caucusing GOPers.

As it turned out, the space was unneeded. The voting machines stayed where they were, and circular folding tables were rolled into the waiting area.

At our table, in three concentric circles, there were 19 of us, many of whom had presumably decided that lungs were a measure of intelligence. Two guys kept going on and on about how the IRS needed to be abolished. Two others kept going on about how they hated McCain. The loudest was the large girl* who went on and on about how Huckabee could still pull off the nomination; she kept drawing designs on a pad of paper and explaining what she referred to as "The Scenario": a loss here, an endorsement there, and bang, a brokered convention.

The precinct captain counted us off, then announced that there were 21 slots for county delegates. He then said, "Umm, does anyone not want to be a delegate?"

Three hands went up, neither of which were Astro-Girl's or mine.

And that's how I became a delegate.

(*Changed from "fat chick")

Obama wins RI; TX, OH down to the wire

Voted today; soon (in Texas's crazy-quilt primary/caucus system) it's back to the precinct.

Over at the Irish Trojan, Brendan Loy solicited predictions. I offered the following:

Clinton narrowly wins Texas (primary only), wins Ohio by 7.

I added:

Oh: My precinct in Houston is Upper Kirby, a kind of yuppie middle-class professional/just-out-of-med-school/just starting in law area south of posh River Oaks.

The area set aside for the Dem Caucus is the local Lamar High School, either in the gym or the expansive adjacent lobby.

The GOP? An office boardroom.

Poster 4-7 rejoined:

I guess that's appropriate. The GOP is where you go to get business done, the Dem. party is where you go for childish games that lead nowhere if you don't eventually grow up.

:P

Heh.

Primary/Caucus Day in Texas

And the only suspense left--let's face it--is, How far will the Clintons go?

Never mind today. Come the day after Pennsylvania, will the Clintons lead in pledged delegates? No.

Will they lead in pledged-plus-super? No.

Will they (absent Michigan and Florida, a phrase that nearly puts me to sleep to type) be within 150 delegates of Obama, total? Not so much.

So: What will they do?

Two options. Cut losses, retrench, and position Hillary as, say, Majority Leader as soon as pipsqueak Reid can be disposed of.

Then Hillary can call for for cloture the next 20 years.

Or else? Napalm.

You gotta believe the press is craving the latter. Right now, there is a general consensus of Hillary-as-drag, as someone embarrassing herself by not knowing when to exit.

But if she goes, what then? Obama v. McCain? If the past twenty years (Dukakis v. Bush 41) tell us anything, general election polls don't mean a damn until they stabilize after the second convention. The GOP is due up in September.

So: Absent the Clinton slash-and-burn strategy, the Washington press is stuck waiting around for six months--waiting for Obama or McCain to say f&^* or get shot.

So, again: what will the Clintons do?

Orwell used to say that understanding the Soviet Union required imagination more than intellect.

Not that the Clintons are the Politburo.

But you get the idea.

Amy Poehler as Hillary

Hilary was on SNL last night. She bombed. (To be fair, so did Rudy in his cameo.)

Much better was Amy Poehler as Hillary in their debate:

Poehler-as-Hillary said, taking on the special interests required someone like Mrs. Clinton:

''Someone so annoying, so pushy, so grating, so bossy and shrill, with a personality so unpleasant, that at the end of the day the special interests will have to go, 'Enough! We give up! Life is too short to deal with this awful woman! Just give her what she wants and she’ll shut up!' And I think the American people will agree, that someone is me.''

Clinton in the Vortex

Juan Williams, on Fox This Morning, guessed that Hillary would get out if she did not sweep Texas and Ohio.

What was significant, however, was not his words but something else:

The pleading in his eyes.

As in: please please please, Hillary, don't give McCain the gift of a divided party.

This entire election year seems designed as a gift to the Dems.

Three to four Senate pick-ups, very close to a filibuster-proof majority, once the Olympia Snowes of the world are factored in.

No worse than a push in the House, and probably 10 pick-ups, with over 24 GOP retirees.

And, as if anyone noticed, Obama-mania is sweeping the nation.

All that is left is for Hillary to step aside.

But will it work out that way?

The text wil be this Tuesday, and whether the Clintons will step forward with a legal challenge to Texas's (admittedly) byzantine primary/caucus system, a procedure so complicated it was best ignored for years, until suddenly Texas mattered.

Astro-Girl and I will be caucusing for McCain Tuesday night, so we'll probably miss the fun.

Meanwhile, this, in the New York Observer.

Gloria Steinam joins Mark Penn, Bill Shaheen, Howard Wolfson, Bob Kerrey and Bill Clinton in Hillary's "For God's Sake, Stop Helping Me" Hall of Fame.

“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.

McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five-and-a-half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

The Clintons do what they can to cover up:

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign sends over the following statement from Howard Wolfson: "Senator Clinton has repeatedly praised Senator McCain's courage and service to our country. These comments certainly do not represent her thinking in any way. Senator Clinton intends to have a respectful debate with Senator McCain on the issues."

In her dreams, presumably.

WFB, RIP

The word has come that William F. Buckley, Jr. has died.

The case can be made for Buckley as the most influential journalist of the second half of the 20th century. He was most responsible, first, for separating conservatism from the outright bigots and John Birchers, and second for making the defeat of imperial communism seem achievable--which, in the end, it was. When the cracking of the Soviet Empire finally occurred in the 1990s, when what Buckley had envisioned as far back as the 1940s finally happened, it happened with such a thoroughness and such a repudiation of the past that many were drawn to believe it was inevitable. It was not. The defeat of the Warsaw Pact happened because men like Buckley were able to give voice to an idea, and because men like (to list a partial honor role) Eisenhower, Dulles, Kennedy, Rusk and Reagan put that idea into action.

Update: Welcome, Irish Trojan readers. Anyone influenced by Buckley's words and works will be at home here.

Clinton Watch III--The photo

If you haven't seen it, it's here.

Jim Geraghty, at his Campaign Spot blog at NRO, unearthed a talking-points memo that adds a whole new chapter to the history of non-denial denial. The questions are the presumptive ones from reporter's; the answers are those that Hillary's staffers are expected to produce:

Q: In the campaign’s official statement today Maggie Williams does not directly respond to whether the Clinton campaign circulated this picture. Do you know whether anyone in your camp circulated this picture?

A: No. I was not aware of it, the campaign didn’t sanction it and did not know anything about it.

Q: Have you asked all of the campaign staff about this?

A: We have over 700 people on this campaign and I’m not in a position to know what each one of them may or may not have done.

Have you actually seen the email the campaign is supposedly circulating? If you do see it, let me know.

For now, all we know is that the Drudge Report mentions an e-mail, but you haven’t seen it and to date, it’s not clear whether this e-mail even exists.

Q: Are you going to make any effort to question the staff about whether anybody actually sent out an e-mail like that?

A: I’m not in the position to ask 700 people to come in and answer questions about it. To put this as clearly and simply as I can: I was not aware of it, the campaign didn’t sanction it and did not know anything about it.

In the end--if this was unearthed by Hillary's camp, and if it was circulated (probably by a staffer protected by five layers of deniability, sort of the analog to Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather) the irony would be palpable, since no one made more of a fetish than Hillary in dressing up in native garb during her endless goodwill missions as First Lady. Just sayin'.

Oscars!

I'm guessing a big night for No Country for Old Men: picture, director, adapted screenplay, supporting and a lot of the technical stuff.

Otherwise, I'll take the chalk: Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, Ruby Dee.

Beyond that, I'll be posting in the comments section over at The Irish Trojan.

Update: Nothing like 1) Stewart bombing with three atrocious political jokes in a row before recovering slightly with his black/woman President asteroid thing, and 2) Amy Adams lip-synching as poorly as a guest on the old Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

A whole hour, and no crapping about global warming. A record?

Update: Tilda Swinton, in the first stunner of the night. Tough category--I saw every performance except Ruby Dee's, all four were exemplary, and Dee was supposed to win.

The Coens, best screenplay: The first sign it might be a big night for No Country For Old Men. (Bardem was a stand-alone.)

Update:And while we're at it, what about the sorry state of film songs? Best Song once went to classics like "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow." As recent as two decades ago, "Footloose" competed with "Against All Odds" competed with . . .

HOLY CRAP! Marie Cotillard?

Anyone with the Swinton-Cotillard parlay?

Okay, back to my original point. Do you realize there was a time that "You're the One That I Want" from "Grease" didn't crack the top five? Or "Grease," the song itself? Or that none of the original songs the Bee Gees wrote for "Saturday Night Fever" earned a nomination?

This time? I suppose the catchy reggae-ish Kristin Chenoweth song from "Enchanted" is catchy. And that thing about the kid musician. Catchy. That's it.
And we'll never hear these songs again.

(Thought, a day later: I saw that spikey little song from Juno performed live (well, live at the event)--not the one about how could anyone want anyone else, but the one about never meeting a boy named Troy she didn't like. It blew away the five on Oscar night, both in composition and delivery. Geez, what's with this Academy? Or was the song not written for the movie?)

Update: Okay--Stewart redeems himself majorly by bringing the girl from best song back to talk.

I'm with Brendan Loy (over at Irish Trojan) re the long, unfunny routines, the endless segments, etc. But to be specific, the worst--the really only truly unforgivable--aspect of each Oscars telecast is the shutting off of the microphone just as the One Winner Too Many steps forward. That tactic is a disgrace, especially given how unfairly it is dispensed. Adrien Brody can shush Bill Conti's orchestra so he might speak two, three, four minutes long. Julia Roberts can speak so long she might be filibustering the Voting Rights Act, and people can marvel at her "spunk." But let the second winning Art Director try to say hello to her children, and not only does the orchestra start up, they shut off the freaking mike , thus maximizing the humiliation toward this poor person at the precise apex of that person's professional life.

If this will continue, never mind Stewart or Goldberg or even Chris Rock. Assign Chuck Barris the permanent host and be done with it.

Stewart isn't having a good night. But his gesture toward that poor embarrassed woman makes up for everything.

Jimmy's blog

By the way, anyone who is of a like mind (or maybe not like-minded, or perhaps into gardening) as commenter Jimmy, aka "liberal wingnut" (that was one commenter) aka Prof Jimmy, aka my colleague Jimmy Langston, should check him out on Jimmy's Blog.

Lotta family stuff, lotta gardening stuff. Some politics. (How about some poker tips? It appears that the Houston Chronicle, in its unending quest to remove anything worth reading from its pages, had stopped wossname's Saturday poker column.) General sunniness from a smart egg.

In fact . . . it appears Jimmy kept closer track of the Writer's Strike than I did. Both of us had dogs in that particular hunt, Jimmy with family member and myself with my friend Cinco Paul. I was bowled over by the start of the semester and lost track of the goings-on. Jimmy, not so much.

Oscar-watch

When I was young, I wanted to do two things: read books and go to the movies.

In high school, I wanted to read, write, drive a car, and go to the movies.

In my twenties, I wanted to read, write, teach, get laid, and go to the movies.

In my thirties, I wanted to read, write, jog, get laid, watch baseball, play softball, play golf and go to the movies.

Now, in my forties, I want to read, write, jog, play golf, teach, watch baseball ands go to the movies. (Out of deference to Astro-Girl, matters of intimacy are omitted.)

Sense a pattern?

The idea of going to the movies has never waned; the idea of watching the Oscars, however, has gone up or down with the quality of the movies.

A few years ago, home alone one Sunday night after after softball, exhausted and bored, I could not bring myself to watch any Oscar show that would award Best Picture to such a pile of crap as American Beauty, a film that tweaked the genre of Release Your Inner Jew films (Ordinary People, Interiors) and replaced it with Release Your Inner Gay. I had grown up with the Oscars, had reveled in the Best Picture victory of Rocky and mourned the loss of Apocalypse Now (to Kramer vs. Kramer, no less!). There were years, boys and girls, when the Final Four championship would actually be scheduled against the Oscars, and I felt genuine torment over which one to give my attention. (The best solution I remember was in 1987, when I was home for Spring Break, and my family and I dragged my parents color TV from the bedroom to the living room and placed it side-by-side with our living room console, thus allowing me to watch Keith Smart's jump shot to lead Indiana over Syracuse just as Dianne Wiest was accepting her Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters.)

However, in the late nineties and early aughts, my attention dwindled to nothing, then reached its apotheosis (never mind waiting for them, I out-and-out avoided them) with American Beauty.

What brought me back? I can remember a certain trio of films released in December, 2005, essentially two winters ago: Capote, The Squid and the Whale, and Good Night and Good Luck. Of those films, only Squid I would describe as great(I caught the tail end of the film last night and had to watch it to the end, so transfixed was I with Jeff Daniels' boorish self-pity in easily the best performance of his career), but all three films struck me, in a way that almost defies explanation, as the sort of films we go to the movies for. All three were bound up with the Oscars, and so I was eager, two months later, to watch. The same feeling strikes me this year, as--for the very first time--I will have seen all five nominated-for-Best-Picture films by the time of the broadcast, and will have accumulated my own rooting interests (especially Ellen Page for Best Actress and Saoirse Ronan for Best Supporting Actress, dark horses both).

In recent months, as the number of art film houses in Houston has reduced to one (The River Oaks 3, with the nabobs of Weingarten Realty eyeing the choice location near West Gray and Shepherd), I've decided to appreciate what remains, and have spent a few afternoons availing myself of the ancient old palace. To be sure, my selection has been limited; DesertRose recommended a movie a month or so ago--Starting Out in the Evening, or something--but with Houston's art films limited to a total of three screens, said film was here and gone in what felt like a week. But I have seen enough.

Inspired by Prof Jimmy's nice words, I'm going to forget all about politics for a weekend and think about that far more satisfying element of the world, movies.

To start, some earlier thoughts about Atonement here.

McCain v. Times, Day 2

Prof Jimmy, my liberal sparmate, writes:

McCain is in trouble (of course, he always was). The Newsweek story today shows, based on his own testimony, that he lied in his denials yesterday. He said the lobbyists never asked him to intervene, and his earlier testimony claims they did. The deeper problem for him is that he has created this Maverick persona, part of which is a dislike for lobbyists and lobbying. He surrounds himself with lobbyists. That looks hypocritical.

He paints a picture of himself as a campaign finance reformer, and now he is caught playing games with public campaign finance rules. He has been pushing the envelope, ethically, on the very issues he tries to hold up as his strong points.

Hmm. A few thoughts.

1. At time like these I envy (on behalf of those I support) Bill Clinton's political skills. I have often said that if the Clinton White House had responded to Katrina precisely the way the Bush White House did, with two exceptions, President Clinton would have gained 10 points in the polls. Clinton would have the political savvy, first, to fly to New Orleans, have his advance team ferret out the gnarliest, sweatiest, fattest black woman in Ward Nine, then make sure he was photographed hugging her in a suitably hagiographic way: say, with the White House Press Corps positioned twenty feet lower than them, and with the tall weeds taking up half the frame. This would have been the cover of Time magazine, and would be the voters' lasting memory of Katrina. Second, Clinton would have found rhetoric suitable to placing the blame for what went wrong precisely in the lap of that buffoon, Mayor Nagin, in the sly, sliding way he tried to diminish Obama's victory in South Carolina.

Apropos of his methods, I can see Clinton faced with a story such as in the Times (not that the Times would ever run a story like yesterday's against Bill Clinton). Bill Clinton (or, more likely, his acolytes) would start by insinuating that the writers were threatened by a successful woman. He would then make some statement that was manifestly false ("I did not . . . have . . . sexual . . . relations . . . with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky") but too time-consuming and humiliating to disprove, and after it was disproven he would declare being caught in a lie "old news the American people are tired of." McCain doesn't have Clinton's skill (who does?), and he might suffer for it.

2. Given a day's reflection, there is something sticking out about all these accusations, and the something is only salutary to the right wing that is presently rushing to McCain's defense. McCain-Feingold was the greatest assault on free speech since the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the driving force was McCain's own sense of redemption in the wake of the Keating Five. Conservatives with no dog in the fundraising hunt despised McCaun-Feingold on principle, in favor of a set of regulations proposed by George Will:

*No cash
*No foreign money
*Full disclosure

However . . . there was, I now realize, another element to conservatives' distaste to McCain-Feingold, one that went beyond its First Amendment implications, even beyond the New York Times' approbation for the free speech restriction/incumbent protection legislation that was laughingly termed "campaign finance reform." Our distaste was rooted, I now see, in the notion that McCain-as-maverick was a set-up from the start, a means of the MSM's using McCain himself as a cudgel to club other Republicans as long as he was useful. Once that usefulness was exhausted--once Romney, Thompson, and Guiliani were disposed of (and make no mistake, there is no public figure in America the Times despises so much as Rudy)--McCain could be discarded.

How else does one explain the Times' endorsement of McCain in the New York primary a month ago--at the very moment they were sitting on the front-page story we all read yesterday?

In the end (or, to be more precise, the middle), going after McCain was just so easy. Chuck Schumer can, in one month, pull in 800 grand in campaign contributions from the very hedge fund managers he regulates, but Schumer has the look and countenance of a mob lawyer, so nobody cares. Bill Clinton can play Stable Boy and the Milkmaid in the Oval Office, but everyone takes his scoundrel history as read, and discounts it. But as for McCain, for whom the last 20 years has been about moral and ethical rectitude, a flimsy, patched-together story is enough to call into doubt his entire ethos, so it runs, and it has effect.

3. Understand where all this is going. Prof Jimmy is (as Don Vito would say) a serious person, worthy of respect. His mention of the Newsweek story is worthy of examination.

So I read the thing.

My verdict? McCain is in trouble here . . . but only slightly, only in the realm of He talked to someone, as opposed to, He didn't talk to someone. If any of this mess hangs up McCain, it will be in the realm of telling a lie about something nobody can pin on nobody.

Above all else? McCain gains yardage here.

McCain v. the Times

1. This story is the best news for McCain since Florida. Nothing--nothing--pushes the right wing toward a fellow GOPer as quickly as a New York Times hit piece. In fact, there were some Republicans such as Phil Gramm (on economics) and Jesse Helms (on affirmative action) who understood the dynamic, and reveled in the Times' disdain. McCain decided to take a different tack, and--in winning the Times' endorsement for the New York GOP primary--seemed to make a definite move toward the middle, in hopes of catching independents and (what seemed important at the time) anti-Hillary Democrats.

On his radio show on January 30th, Rush Limbaugh (no fan of McCain) said as much as this: as soon as McCain becomes the presumptive nominee, the leftist press who gloried in him versus Bush, versus Romney, versus Guiliani will turn on him with a vengeance. Today Limbaugh replayed the quote--and who could blame him? While watching cable news today, one watched mainstream Republicans barely containing themselves. There will little of what Limbaugh said to McCain supporters--Now you gonna listen to me?--but it hardly needed to be said.

McCain is the GOP nominee, period, and the oldest rule of the schoolyard is, "Nobody hits my little brother but me."

2. At the same time, the point of the article was hardly to hang McCain up for either a) cheating on his wife, b) ethics violations. Neither of these was the intent of the article. The intent of the article was to make McCain fair game for any of a number of allegations that would use the Times story as a jumping-off point.

When it comes to the Times, what matters is not that any one allegation be true, but that story after story, charge after charge, push a certain narrative forward, if only a little. I have seen this tactic in action since I was fifteen years old. Ronald Reagan was a doddering old fool (fool enough to win the Cold War, reduce the number of nuclear missiles in Europe, and keep the Contra cause alive in Nicaragua just long enough to ensure democracy in Central America). George H.W. Bush was a lightweight (Ambassador to China, RNC Chair, Head of the CIA, Vice-President for eight years, mastermind of the Kuwaiti liberation at the expense of 132 American lives--some lightweight!). Dan Quayle: moron. (To sight one example, get him talking about the history of Southeast Asia over the last half-century.) George W. Bush was a draft dodger (who was trained to fly rickety old bombers, and for it suffered a quarter-century of calumny and lies, culminating in a smear campaign so ten-thumbed it brought down a network news division).

Well, what of John McCain? War hero, prisoner of war, torture victim for five years (and it bears repeating, not so the North Vietnamese might procure information he might have had, but so they might convince him to walk out the front door of the Hanoi Hilton), advocate of some of the very policies the Times finds admirable but the right wing sees as odious (campaign finance, illegal immigrant amnesty, etc., etc.), ethics above reproach. The Times knows in its DNA that its general election recommendation will be either Obama or Hillary, probably the former.

So what to do?

Cut him off at the knees. Cut him off at his strongest point, his ethics. And cut him off in such a way that the rest of the MSM, like Basset Hounds hearing a dog whistle, might conclude it was open season.

And so we have the basic outline of the attack. The Huffpost, a nice distillation of up-market American liberalism, gives the basic angles of attack:

Only the tip of the iceberg:Cliff Schecter uses these precise words:

Many are also unaware, because somehow it has evaded the media's radar, that he's surrounded himself with more lobbyists than Jack Abramoff on a golf outing. Vicki Iseman, and his actions on behalf of her clients, is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Rick Davis, his campaign manager. Corporate lobbyist. Charlie Black, one of his chief advisors. Corporate lobbyist. We could continue, but The Huffington Post would cut me off and close the bar before I would finish.

John McCain has done many honorable things in his life. Some of them, such as his stances on campaign finance reform, a gun-show loophole and carbon emissions came during his brief period of political sanity, which lasted from about 1999 until 2004 (hmm, what happened in 2004 that might have changed things...).

But much of his tenure in Washington has been marred by behavior entirely at odds with the image that has been granted him. It's time the media told us the truth. We can handle the truth.

The Postman Always Rings Twice: As in, maybe he didn't have sex with this lobbyist, but this story is a metaphor for everything wrong with him:

Personally, I think his physical and political embrace of George W. Bush was the most lewd and obscene act this guy could commit, proving that it was easier for him to withstand years of torture by the Viet Cong than resist his own tortured political ambitions.

Ridicule is now allowed: It's hard to treat a hero like McCain with the same disdain reserved for a Quayle, a W, or even genuine war heroes such as Bush 41 or Bob Dole. There's not a sentient adult in America unaware of McCain's biography, and it's hard to get around.

The Times story opens the door. Treat yourself to a sample of Huffposter Chris Kelly:

John McCain sleeps around? It's like that awful Warhol movie that imagines Frankenstein's monster doing it. And the same week as the Gene Simmons' sex tape, too. How would Michelle Obama put it? For the first time in my country's life, I'm really proud to be an adult.

Then:

Eww. Do you think he calls her "my friend" when they're doing it? Do you think he calls his penis "my friend?"

No, you know it's the "A4 Skyhawk."

And with a young woman named Iseman! You don't have to like puns much to get a kick out of that. Doing it with a man who's barely alive. I, semen, meet I, Robot.

And is there a better name for an old porn star than "Johnny McCane?" "Roger Hickory?" "Rod Leathery?"

And then this:

And afterwards she has to dress him, because he can't move his arms.

Cripple humor! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Back in the nineties, when the right seemed to take over humor, when PJ O'Rourke was the funniest political journalist and Christopher Buckley the funniest political novelist, the question was asked: Where are all the funny leftists? Where are the heirs to Mort Sahl, George Carlin, and the Harvard Lampoon? When did liberals become the more-water-in-your-beer crowd, the dweebs whining, Not funnny, guys?

Well, now we know. Jon Stewart has a few lively moments, though his self-importance will be his undoing. Beyond that: Al Franken? Bill Maher? Leftist humor is nonexistent because it sucks.

Well, McCain should now know what he's up against.

Hillary Watch II, etc.

Plagiarism? Is that all she's got? Leaving aside their (eg Lanny Davis's) pretending they didn't make the accusation when they did (once again, telling a lie about their lying when they're lying), what struck me about the accusation was that it was so lame.

This is the famed Clinton attack machine? Howie Carr, in the Boston Herald, was . . . well, if it's possible to be quoted laughing:

How desperate is Hillary Clinton when she’s accusing Barack Obama of lifting material from Deval Patrick?

First of all, Deval is working for him - you can’t steal something from somebody who’s working for you. Second of all, if Barack ever does get caught lifting material from somebody else who’s not on the team, he can always dust off the ultimate excuse:

It wasn’t plagiarism, it was an homage.

That’s what those wacky Jerry Lewis-loving French film directors always used to say when somebody caught them lifting scenes, shot by shot, from a crappy Grade B Monogram film noir.

Lame, lame, lame. Is that it?

Can Dean act as peacemaker?

Story here.

If the DNC is ever hard up for money, it could offer, on pay-per-view, the sight of (if it comes to that) Howard Dean sitting down with both Clintons to explain that the campaign is over.

I'd tune in.

Hillary Watch II

Some addendums to the below:

1. A few days ago Brendan Loy,The Irish Trojan, caught Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson in a rather interesting quote:

We are not making distinctions between certain kinds of delegates. We don’t make distinctions between delegates that are chosen by millions of voters in a primary or tens of thousands of voters in a caucus. We don’t make a distinction between elected officials.

Loy responds:

Heh. I love the blatant dishonesty of the statement, "We don't make distinctions between [primaries and caucuses]." I wish someone had replied, "Of course you do, Howard! You've done it consistently throughout the last several weeks, and in fact, you're doing it right now, under the guise of denying it!" It takes a truly artful liar to lie about the very words he is saying, even as he says them. These Billary people really make dishonesty an artform.

2. SunDevil Joe adds:

Regarding Florida and Michigan, I'm sure Bill and Hill will find a "disinterested party" to file a lawsuit to seat the delegates.

Laurence Tribe, probably. More in sorrow than in anger.

Hillary Watch

The next three weeks are going to be fun.

Having watched the Clintons in action--their splendid narcisissm, the elegant way they demonize their opponents by pretending to compliment them, their brutal tactics, and above all their (especially his) oceans of self-pity--I was hoping for just this scenario.

I've again finished reading Robert McKee's Story, his screenwriting book (not in preparation for attempting a screenplay, like Nicholas Cage's brother, Nicholas Cage, in Adaptation, but because McKee's writing is so damn fascinating). What McKee tells us over and over is: in order to reveal the true nature of your character, expose him (or her) to the maximum amount of pressure.

The "maximum amount of pressure" appears to be the case here, as the Clintons gird themselves for three weeks of "When Will She Get Out?" and "Clintons in Turmoil" stories while Obama moves through the relatively favorable part of the primary/caucus schedule. And so the question becomes: what stop will they pull out, what tactic will they employ, what glass will they need to break, what steamer trunk of evil have they been saving for just the moment?

As I wrote below, the Clintons have faced eight major challenges since being stunned by the 1994 mid-terms. The closest-run of the bunch was the early Lewinsky scandal, which Bill survived out of sheer gall: marching cabinet members out in the rain to declare their support to reporters, attending church hand-in-hand with Hillary in Great Stoic Face mode while holding out his Bible like a peace offering. The early momentum against Clinton was quelled in a matter of days, first with Clinton's lectern-pounding denial, then with a State of the Union Address that, by implication, somehow commingled the charges against him with effort to defeat Social Security reform.

I have friends who argue that the Starr investigation should never have gone into Lewinsky, it was all about sex, blah, blah, blah. I don't entirely disagree. (And I thought Ken Starr should have folded the hand months earlier, simply because I thought it so futile. The Grand Jury system only works upon the penalty of jail time for a refusal to answer; what was Starr going to do, deliver a contempt citation to the White House and lead Clinton out in handcuffs?) My point was, in a scandal that never really threatened his presidency, not after the SOTU, Clinton was willing to survive by challenging every canon of accepted political wisdom. Think about it: supposedly, the lesson of Watergate was that the cover-up was worse than the crime. Bill Clinton turned that notion on his head by engaging in a cover-up for months, and then, upon finding himself with no further outs, made a vague confession, whereupon his supporters instantly declared the entire business "old news the American people are sick of." And the thing is, they were right. The eight-month cover-up separated Bill Clinton from his misdeeds in a way no quick confession ever could.

Now the Clintons find themselves in a much rougher patch, staring at the first concrete evidence of their waning political power, and what is worse, their increasing irrelevance. And the question is: What will they do? We already have some clues provided by the New York Times here.

Of special note is the matter of the Florida and Michigan delegates. Veteran Clinton-watchers no doubt saw this scenario months ago. Now, I'm not a Democrat; it makes no difference to me how the Dems select their nominee. They could draw straws, for all I care. Still, one's essential sense of fairness dictates that everyone be told of the process from the start, so every candidate can plan and campaign accordingly, and that the process set in place at the start be adhered to. (The principle is the same with Gore's loss in 2000, but that's another conversation.) Going in, the Dems--all of them--were told that neither Flroida nor Michigan would count. Every major candidate agreed not to campaign in either state. Every candidate, save Hillary, removed their names from both states' ballots, an act I felt was odd at the time. (If pressed, a Clintonite might say, Oh, on, off, what does it matter?)

I had a familiar tingle when I heard that Hillary was making an appearance in Florida right before the primary, though we were told, No, this isn't campaigning, it's a fundraiser, and besides Obama is running ads on CNN, and Floridians get CNN, and therefore Obama is campaigning in Florida, not Hillary. (This is a common Clinton tactic: deny you're doing what you're doing, then accuse the opposition of doing what you're doing. See: "The politics of personal destruction.") Then Hillary--only name on the ballot, remember--stunned everyone by having a "victory celebration" in Florida, at the beginning of which I, while watching at home, said out loud, "She will talk about getting the Florida delegates seated within two minutes." I was wrong--it took one minute; one minute to turn the entire story from the rules of the Democratic nominating process to the "disenfranchisement" of the voters of Michigan and especially Florida, and, oh, by the way, did we mention how many of them are poor and black?

The only truly funny thing is how the DNC, by all accounts, had no idea the Clintons would pull such a gambit. A few days ago, this was presented as news:

With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

Mrs. Clinton won more votes than Mr. Obama in both states, though both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively there.

Gotta love that "technically."

And this is only the start.

A friend writes

My liberal friend, the brilliant Prof Jimmy, responds to my previous post.

Come on Joe. You really think the Dems are afraid of McCain? Sure, Clinton wouldn't beat him by nearly as much as Obama would, but she would still beat him. He is the least objectionable to the collective factions that make up the Republican base, but he is not going to turn out the vote. Dems are going to turn out in huge numbers, especially if it's Obama. Look at the numbers of voters showing up for the Dem primaries. The Dems are going to win. The main hope for you guys should be that Clinton is the next Prez: you can use your hatred of her to begin reuniting your party.

I agree with what you say about the Dem convention. It certainly looks like the superdelegates could decide it, which is awful. Clinton has the establishment behind her, and has to be the favorite if it comes to that.

I will take current GOP troubles as read (or, perhaps, red). The electoral legacy of W's administration may be its ability to eke out 52-48, 51-49, or (in the case of Florida and Ohio) 50.5-49.5 percent victories over Kerry in the battleground states. Karl Rove ran rings around Bob Shrum by assuming the independent vote would eventually split 50-50, then plowing every last dollar into base turn-out. However, the fragility of that victory was underscored in 2006, when the GOP lost both houses, the Senate in supposedly red states like Virginia, Montana, and Missouri; and the House by way of nearly entire GOP delegations pushed out in Indiana and Connecticut, plus enough conservative Dem successes in the South. There is a tipping point in American politics in which an entire slew of 51%-49% victories become 49%-51% defeats. This happened at the Congressional level in '06; it may well continue on this year, in the above states, plus (as I've written) Florida, Ohio, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Iowa.

Before the 2006 mid-terms, the task for the eventual 2008 Dem nominee was simple: win every state Kerry carried, plus either Florida or Ohio. Afterward, who knew? Run strong in the Union slave states, run strong along the Mississippi from the Mason-Dixon southward, pick off a few Mountain states--and why not a landslide? And, with McCain becoming the nominee, precisely one of those states moves into the strong GOP column: Arizona.

Add to that the relative enthusiasm of the Dems vis-a-vis the GOP, and the deal seems sealed.

But. Consider the following:

1. The Dems are afraid of McCain. Some are straightforward enough to admit it, Bob Beckel for one. Some inadvertantly reveal it, like the Kossack who floated the rumor of a McCain-Huckabee ticket (snort) or McCain-Romney (based on the rumor of a silent deal between the two, which isn't true because, at this point, McCain wouldn't need to deal with anyone that way). They may be saving the better oppo for the summer, but right now they sound almost silly: George Bush's third-term. McCain missed X number of votes. 100-year war. Blah blah blah. Are the Dems the odd-on favorite? Sure, on balance, especially with Obama. But a McCain as presumptive nominee on February 7th is not what the Dems wanted.

A McCain victory would be an upside-down version of what W accomplished: carrying a majority of independents and cutting into enough Dems who see his way on the war, while hoping enough conservatives show up. Not an easy task, but doable, and easier by far than how the math would have broken for either Romney or Huckabee.

2. As for the Dems themselves, we are entering three areas of the unknown:

*Brokered convention.

*First African-American nominee, potentially.

The first is not as likely as I thought yesterday. At this moment, both Obama and Hillary have about 900 delegates apiece. If either of them wins 55 percent of all remaining contested delegates, he or she would have to win 40 percent of superdelegates to go over the top before the convention. This is completely doable by either of them. Maybe, maybe not--and if not, who knows what happens at the first brokered convention in real time, even a second ballot? How does it affect the Dems if they go to a second ballot with state-by-state results read off while cameras train on Hillary and Obama in their hotel rooms? Thing is, nobody knows.

Now suppose Obama is the nominee. First African-American. It helps that he is a Democrat. Had Colin Powell run in 1996 (which, in retrospect, he should have), we would have been treated to a run-down of his policies and accomplishments. If Obama is the nominee, we will be lectured non-stop about whether we have the "courage" and "maturity" to vote for an African-American. Now, it is true (and a little bit shameful) that, in this scenario, McCain will become the '86 Boston Celtics and stand as the choice of blatant racists. And Obama will carry 90% of the black vote, which a Dem nominee would carry anyway.

Beyond that voting pattern--what? The Dems nominated a Catholic in 1928--Al Smith--and found anti-papist sentiment more virulent than they had suspected; even New Yorkers who had voted for him to be Governor couldn't bring themselves to vote for him as President--he lost in his home state, while the down-ballot, Democratic, Protestant candidate for Governor (FDR) cruised to victory. Thirty-two years later, Democrats with memories of Smith's debacle blanched at nominating another Catholic, but Kennedy won the heavily Protestant West Virginia primary, made his Houston speech, clobbered Nixon in their first debate, and became President. (It's likely the Mormons will have to travel a similar path, but that's another conversation.) Jesse Jackson, as the Dem nominee, would have lost all 50 states to Bush 41 (and it's instructive to remember the 1988 Jackson boomlet, the one that lasted the week between the Michigan primary, which Jackson won, and the New York Primary, in which Democratic Catholics and Jews showed up in legions to vote against him). Really: how would an African-American candidate fair on a national general election? It's an interesting question, because, really, nobody knows.

*Finally, we have Hillary and Bill Clinton. Now, ponder this: since the 1994 midterms, one or both of them have faced a total of eight enormous challenges: the 1995 government shutdown, the 1996 Presidential re-election run, the 1997 Thompson committee on campaign finance irregularities, the early 1998 Lewinsky allegations, the 1998 midterms, the 1998-99 impeachment process, Hillary's 2000 Senate run, the 2001 Whitewater perjury rap, and Hillary's 2006 re-election run. In seven of eight, Bill or Hillary or both have emerged not only victorious--usually smashingly so--but emboldened. In the eighth (Whitewater), Bill was able to finesse a meaningless suspension of his Arkansas law license and manage to have the news buried on W's inaguration day and spin the event into evidence of his persecution. (I think I could actually like the rascal if not for his self-pity.) My point here is that, outside of the horror show that is their marriage, neither Clinton has actually lost anything in a dozen years. I have an inkling they've forgotten the feeling. Faced with the prospect an Obama within, say, 200 delegates of wrapping up the nomination (and the Maryland-Delaware-DC primaries will tell a lot), will Hillary simply take Howard Dean's marching orders, shrug her shoulders, and return to the Senate, where she can mark up defense appropriation bills for the next 20 years? Or will the Clintons go nuclear, pull out every stop, sink to any level, destroy whom they must in order to return to the White House? And if they go for option 2, what effect will it have on the party if they succeed? What effect if they fail? Once again, we just don't know.

In terms you would appreciate, Jimmy, the Dems at present are holding wired aces, pre-flop. But a lot of cards are still to be turned over. Coming out of the convention in 1988, Mike Dukakis had a 17-point lead. Four years later, at this point in the calendar, Bill Clinton was running third, behind Perot and Bush. And the GOP has put itself in the best shape possible by going to McCain, and going early.

Mac is back . . . ing in?

A few thoughts:

1. We've been hearing about lack of GOP voter enthusiasm, which is true. We've been told about red states turning purple (Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Missouri), which is also true. There is also a tinge of McCain winning almost by default, like Ohio State backing into the BCS Championship by playing its final regular-season game against Michigan around the seventeenth of November, then sitting around while all the contenders beat up on each other. We heard the litany: Mitt never closed the deal emotionally, Thompson got in too late and seemed lazy and half-hearted, Guiliani squandered a national lead by running the most inept campaign since Mitt's father George Romney in '68, and Huckabee was, well, Huckabee. All true, all true, but know this: the Dems are scared out of their socks tonight, if only because McCain is the one guy they have no clue how to run against. Surfing the other side today, I've twice read how John McCain would be "George W. Bush's third term." Never mind if it's true, which it obviously isn't. If Howard Dean thinks anyone outside the netroot echo chamber would believe it, he's on drugs.

2. Do the Dems have anything else? "A hundred years in Iraq?" No. Age? No: the guy was tortured for five years in the Hanoi Hilton, and now we're supposed to wonder about his falling asleep in the Sit Room? "He looked the other way during Abramoff" means, of course, he had no involvement whatsoever. And the first time you hear Dean or Chris Lehane or Mark Fabiani say "Keating Five," you may color the Dems desperate.

3. The big story, this primary season, is the virtual certainty that the Dems will end the primary/caucus process with no one within 300 delegates of the nomination. Because of the binary nature of the process, because of the states that remain, because of the number of super delegates who remain uncommitted or could be peeled off (and if I were an uncommitted SD, I would be refusing all phone calls until my vote could be traded for an ambassadorship to Bermuda), neither Clinton nor Obama will get to the magic number before the convention. Now, this may not necessarily be a bad thing, in the long run, simply because a brokered convention hasn't happened since the invention of cable television. Never mind blogging: the last brokered convention (Dems, 1968) predates the personal computer by a decade. Will the suspense lead to increased ratings, a billion dollars of free advertising, and a candidate with an air of being battle-tested? Or would the chaos hurt the inevitable? What is certain is that, in the coming months, the Clintons will be coming after Obama like they've come after nobody else. Obama's perceived inexperience isn't working as an issue; the nominating process itself is digested by the voting public as on-the-job-training. Tony Rezsko has fallen off the map as an issue. Whatever Bill and Hillary find, whatever more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger pose Bill takes, both Hillary and Obama will probably end up diminished.

4. This from Marty Peretz, in the center-right New Republic:

Now that it's clear that John McCain will be the Republican presidential candidate, my sense is that many Democrats will be making themselves comfortable with him just in case Hillary Clinton gets the nomination. The fact is that she discomforts almost everyone who does not support her, and many who do. She is so brittle, so calculating, so self-besot, so small that you get a half-apology even from her earnest backers. The truth is that she is sometimes--although less and less--grudgingly admired. But she is not loved. Which is what she wants most of all.

Ouch.

The one good thing about Sunday . . .

Was the half-time Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet.

Tom Petty? bah.

Puppy Bowl.

McCain and . . . Barbour

In NRO's The Corner, Linda Schiffren weighs in on potential veeps. Her conclusion:

It is hard to think of a rising star who is likely to be a good vote-getter, a solid conservative, and also good at the policy areas (at least a few of the central ones, like the economy) where McCain is weak. Which is why it has to be a governor with some talent, charisma, and regional respect. But maybe you have someone in mind?

All together now: Haley Barbour.

As in, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.

Rising star? Can anyone say, "The true hero of Katrina?"

Vote-getter? Check. (As much as anyone not named Newt Gingrich, Barbour, as Party Chair, was the author of the 1994 Republican Revolution.)

Solid Conservative? Puh-lease. (Last night on Fox, speaking--as always--as if through a mouthful of hominy grits, Barbour said, "Ah'm more consurrvative thayn the three uh them," before launching into a spiel about how it would soon be time for Romney to step aside, faster'n a one-legged man in a bre'er patch, or however the hell he put it.)

Policy areas? Kind of, yeah: gun ownership, immigration, abortion, gay marriage, and the two most important economic policies to conservatives: tax cuts and cutting taxes. McCain is fine on the war; Barbour would only reinforce his strong suit.

Charisma? The man makes Fred Thompson come off as Mr. Peepers.

Regional respect? Granted, Mississippi is a state McCain would be hard-pressed to lose if he tried. But imagine Barbour in jeans and a button-down blue shirt rolled up to the sleeves, one leg up, elbow on knee, talking to folks in Westlake, Louisiana; in Jackson, Tennessee; in Frankfurt, Kentucky; in Charlottesville, Virginia and Hannibal, Missouri. In the panhandle in Florida.

All of the above states, with McCain at the top of the ticket, are in play.

Just as the Democrats cannot win without both California and New York, the GOP is lost without a solid sweep of the Confederacy. Had I thirty seconds of the Senator's time, I would say the following: "You've brought the ball into the red zone. Now give it to the big fullback.

"Haley Barbour!!"

Giants 17, Patriots . . . 14

Something is very wrong with me, I think.

I've been handed so many gut-ripping defeats in the last seven years (Yankees 2001, 2003, 2004; USC v. Vince Young, vs. UCLA 2006, vs. Stanford this year; Patriots v. Denver two years ago, Colts last year, Giants tonight) I believe I'm getting acclimated to the feeling.

Before the game, I pondered this thought: I made it to the age of 30 loving only one single team: Larry Bird's Celtics. (The nasty 1970s Yankees of Munson, Guidry and Reggie could be admired, but never, ever loved). Then, in the past 12 years, Torre's Yankees, the Jake Plummer/Pat Tillman Sun Devils, the Brady/Belichick Patriots, and Pete Carroll's Leinart/Bush/White/Cody/Tatupu Trojans.

Four teams loved in a single decade. (At one point, from 2002 through the Vince Bowl, the Patriots and Trojans combined for an astounding 111 straight games without a loss of lasting significance, defined as any loss ending all championship hopes.)

A harvest. A lifetime crammed into twelve years.

But two lessons learned along the way.

1. There will always be a price for caring.

2. It hurts more to lose than it feels good to win.

In the past dozen years, I have gone into for contests thinking, This is the game. I've made a pact with God: allow them this win, and the next two decades can hang themselves.

1997 Rose Bowl, and Jake Plummer's dream season.

2001 World Series Game 7, and the Yankees' quest for four straight World Series rings and canonization as the greatest team ever.

2006 Rose Bowl, and the quest for a Three-Pete.

Tonight's Game.

Result: 0-4.

Tonight's oddly enough, not as bad as I thought.

So maybe I'm getting used to it.

Which worries me, I guess.

The Clintons? Liars? Whoulda thunk it?

Really too delicious for words: a group of essays, the most poignant by Jonathan Chait, wondering, Wait, whoever though the Clintons were actually liars? Chait muses:

The Clinton campaign is trying to make it seem as if the complaint is about negativity, and it is pointing out that Obama has criticized Hillary as well. That's what politicians are supposed to do when they compete for votes. But criticism isn't the same thing as lying and sleaze-mongering.

Am I starting to sound like a Clinton hater? It's a scary thought. Of course, to conservatives, it's a delicious thought. The Wall Street Journal published a gloating editorial noting that liberals had suddenly learned "what everyone else already knows about the Clintons." (By "everyone," it means Republicans.)

It made me wonder: Were the conservatives right about Bill Clinton all along? Maybe not right to set up a perjury trap so they could impeach him, but right about the Clintons' essential nature?

Not to worry, though: Chait reassures his readers that the nineties wasn't bad at all, no sirree:

Fortunately, the Journal's attempt to convince us that the Clintons have always been unscrupulous liars seemed to prove the opposite. Its examples of Clintonian lies were their claims that Bob Dole wanted to cut Medicare, that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy, that Paula Jones was "trailer trash" and that Kenneth Starr was a partisan.

Except Dole did vote to cut Medicare, there was a vast right-wing conspiracy and Starr was and is a rabid partisan. ("Trailer trash" is, of course, a matter of opinion, and it's a cruel thing to say, but as far as whether it's a lie -- well, it's not like they called William F. Buckley "trailer trash.")

So maybe the answer is that the Clintons would have smeared their opponents in the 1990s, but lying is unnecessary when the other party is doing things such as voting to slash Medicare to pay for a big tax cut for the rich.

So, first, maybe they would have lied, but they didn't (insofar as "slashing" Medicare, by Chaits's rights, is defined as voting for a reduction in the increase); and smearing an Arkansas woman is far less egregious than smearing a wealthy right-wing columnist far-better equipped to defend himself.

With this piece, Chait joins the ranks of feminists who disgraced themselves in the nineties by trashing not only Paula Jones, but also Kathleen Willey and Juannita Broderick, and who would have piled on Monica Lewinksy had their been any gain for Clinton at all.

Hey, Obama supporters: are the Clintons playing rough with you? Put a little ice on it, baby.

Championship Sunday, Part 3

And now, to relax and enjoy Giants v. Packers.

Oh, Oh, and gotta love tonight's programming:

Fox: Giants v. Packers, in the third-coldest game in NFL history.

CBS: Special Report: "The Age of Warming."

Update: Third Tyne's the Charm--Fox beat me to it.

Giants 23, Packers 20 (OT). Couldn't decide whom to root for or against; based on the "what would help the Patriots most" principle, I measured Randy Moss's ability to run past Al Harris (considerable) against the public sentiment in favor of Brett Favre (again, considerable); plus the trouble for the Pats based on the Giants' having seen the Patriots before (marginal).

It is worth considering, just to consider, that anyone who has bet against the Patriots covering since the middle of November would have made a fortune. Philly was a nail-biter. They came within one stupid Baltimore time-out of losing to the Ravens. The Jets hung in for awhile, as did even Miami. The Giants let by double-digits late. And in the playoffs, both Jacksonville and San Diego hung in for 3 1/2 quarters, San Diego with their best three offensive weapons either out or seriously compromised.

Bottom line: in their last seven games, vs. the spread, the Pats are 0-7. This fact has to be discounted a bit, as the books in Vegas always add a "Cowboy Tax" (or "Irish Tax" or "Trojan Tax" or "Bear Tax") on the chic team of the moment, especially when said team has a certain history of success. But the truth is that the Pats have had to struggle for every win (or in the case of Miami, every win-that-should-have-been-a-stomp) since the 15th of November. Look it up: over two months.

However, the one constant in these seven games has been the wind--and mostly, the cold. They played Philly, Bal'mer and San Diego in outright wind storms. Giants Stadium in December and January is a wind tunnel. And things were hardly better in Foxborough against the other teams. In each situation, Randy Moss was effectively neutralized, Brady's passes fluttered and flew, and the Patriots pass-first offense was reduced to underneath bullets to Welker and Stallworth, plus out patterns to Gaffney.

What saved the Pats was--as Ted Cotrell, the Chargers' DC, said earlier in the week--the ability of the Pats' offense to play seven different types of football. With the Pats' biggest weapon, the bomb to Moss, as effectively neutralized as LaDanian Tomlinson's running game, with a superb and opportunistic Chargers secondary goading Brady into more interceptions this week (three) than he had incompletions last week (two), the Pats switched to grind-it-out, playing two and three tight ends, pounding Maroney between the tackles, and throwing screens and short-short-short outs, including two crucial first-down catches by Kevin Faulk, the game was effectively over by the seven-minute mark of the fourth quarter.

Now, looking forward two weeks, one has to consider all of the previous paragraph, plus the fact that the Giants' defense isn't as good as the Chargers', plus the re-match may favor Belichick over Coughlin--add all that up, and then add that the Super Bowl will likely be played indoors, in 71-degree weather, and no wind whatsoever. What you are left with are the Pats of the last two months plus a Randy Moss and downfield passing game that becomes a factor all over again.

Anyway, what I think as I go to bed.

Championship Sunday, Part 2

I almost never watch halftime, but I'm glad (for all the wrong reasons) that I watched today.

First, as Bill Simmons had harped on over and over, with any studio analyst past the fourth, the laws of diminishing returns starts to kick in. The situation has gotten so bad that on certain shows (most conscpicuously, "Football Night in America") that analysts are now breaking off in smaller bunches, like freshman comp students doing group work in preparation for a class presentation.

Second, what the use of more analysts if all that happens is the stupidity is multiplied? The consensus at the CBS table (Cowher, Sharpe, and Marino) was that Rivers either had to sit now or had to sit the next time he made a mistake. Boomer, who almost fell out of his chair, could only come up with: Umm, what?

The third was Dan Marino's cell phone, which erupted not once but three times. My own theory is that, after the first time, one or two other persons who know his number started calling, to see if they could get Marino yelled at--or perhaps stared down by an apoplectic producer the same way Marino used to glare at receivers who had dared drop one of his passes.

Second half:

Good return by Maroney. The theme of the last few games has been that Welker gets right what Brady-to-Moss can't accomplish.

Brady sacked, followed by . . .

Third and long . . . interception.

Rivers leads the Chargers down inside the ten. Another stop: Seau lays out Turner. Keading. 14-12, Pats.

Brady (well, Maroney) leads the Patriots smartly down the field and . . . . ugh . . . intercepted in the end zone.

Turner with the first down. Pats switch from bend-but-don't-break to pressure. Rivers, two incompletetions. Punt.

Brady to Heath Evans, first down.

End of third quarter.

Student Maroney right, student Maroney left: first and goal. TD pass to Welker.

Pats 21, Bolts 12.

San Diego, first down.

A few plays later, 3rd and 10 at the thirty--Rivers complete for the first.

Seymour and Rivers into it; Seymour gives Rivers an elbow shiver, and Rivers (clearly a graduate of the Dennis Rodman School of Acting) flails on the ground as if shot.

Fourth-and-10. Nine minutes to go, two scores down. Will the Chargers go for it? No. Punt.

Now, following a Brady sack, third-and-11. Crucial pass to Faulk, who rolls to the yellow stripe. First down.

A few plays later, Brady throw behind Faulk, who hauls it in. First down.

Almost there.

Maroney, Maroney . . . two-minute warning.

Maroney for the first down. This should do it.

Kneel, kneel . . . Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2007 AFC Champions.

Championship Sunday, Part 1

The start of Championship Sunday, aka The Greatest Sports Day of the Year.

First up, Pats v Bolts, and I'm where I've been every week (save the second Dolphins game): sick to my stomach.

So, okay.

Update: 0-0, first quarter. So far:

1. The high winds have eliminated any downfield passing.
2. The San Diego defense is controlling the line; I think the Pats have run for negative yardage thus far.
4. Tom Brady has more incompletions (three) than all of last week.
5. Phil Simms, a usually smart guy, is first out of the gate with the idiocy of the day: "All week long, the San Diego Chargers have been told they don't have a chance . . ." Oh? By whom? No, really, who said such a thing?

Brady interception. A weird silence settles over Gillette.

Third and goal . . . Rivers' pass . . . caught out of bounds. 3-0 Bolts.

Call it a moral victory for the Pats.

The point of the Ford Liberty commercial seems to be this: buy a Ford SUV, and a horde of woodland animals will enter through the sky roof to sing Neil Diamond songs. Works for me.

That McDonald's commercial, the one starring the spoiled little brat who teaches his family to release their inner black . . .

Moss on a reverse. 14 yards, looking like Kareem leading a Showtime fast break.

Two good passes to Faulk, and the end of the first. Now, on behalf of the Patriots, the timber wolf will sing Bob Segers' "Against the Wind."

Update: Three plays, Maroney touchdown.

Bolts' ball . . . completion to Vincent Jackson, who only gets one foot in. Didn't anyone see this? Won't anyone say anything?

First and goal at the nine: Turner for a yard.
Second and goal: Rivers flushed out, throws to Gates, knocked down by Bru (Bruuuu!, or as the University of Arizona-hating Desert Rose refers to this former Wildcat, Fat Teddy Bruschi.)
Time out.
Third and goal: complete in the flat to Chambers, who is undercut by Harrison seven yards from the end zone.
Kaeding field goal. 7-6 Pats.

Third-and-short, pass to Moss batted down. Hanson punt, downed inside the five.

Third-and-short, Rivers complete to Sproles.

With Mike Vrabel wrapped around his ankle like a terrier, Rivers throws an off-balance flutter that Asante Samuel simply snatches from Chris Chambers' grasp. Two plays later, Brady TD to Gaffney. 14-6.

Three minutes to go, Rivers throws an interception to Ellis Hobbs as if playing catch with his brother in the backyard.

Two-minute warning.

Third-and-two. Brady over-muscles a ball to an open Welker. Punt.

Sproles runs for 25 yards, ball comes out. Ruled down. Review.

Verdict: not even close to a fumble. The upshot is a free timeout for San Diego. (Would it have been possible for New England to decline the review? A green hanky, perhaps?)

13 seconds to go. Rivers overthrows; Kaeding out for the field goal attempt. Time out, Patriots.

Jim Nantz: "Belichick's trying to ice the kicker."
Astro-Girl: "Ice him? Belichick's gonna throw ice on him?"
Me: "No."
Astro-Girl: "Well, I wouldn't put it past him."

Kick is just good. 14-9, Pats.

McCain wins South Carolina.

And the race--really--is down to two people, him and Romney.

South Carolina: McCain?

On the heels of Mitt in Nevada, McCain leads in the exit polls by something like six percent.

Update: With fifteen percent in, it's down to four, 34-30.

So:

If this holds, and if either McCain or Romney win Florida, we are down to a two-man race.

Suddenly, matters glisten with possibility.

Atonement

In a previous life, I'm someone's perpetual guest at an English country house between the wars, a fantasy I've nursed over the last decade-and-a-half, starting with Brideshead Revisited (first the book, then the mini-series, then the book-on-tape, then finally the mini-series on DVD); and straight through to The Remains of the Day, Howard's End, Gosford Park, and the writings of P.G. Wodehouse.

"Things were much better upstairs than downstairs," Roger Ebert usually writes when another Arcadian movie opens. True enough: but things seemed quite good for the tuxedoed Wilcoxes and Stevenses shimmering through the mansions with an air of command. (Below the rank of under-butler--perhaps not so great.) I've probably read Brideshead a half-dozen times (once, in part, on New Year's Eve, and when I returned to the book six months later, I saw the spare cigar ash between the pages); I've listened to it on tape at least as many times, and I knew Astro-Girl was the one for me when she asked to eshew the traditional Wedding March in favor of what Grace had walked to when she married Leo in "Will and Grace." The tune? "Theme from Brideshead Revisited." I became so familiar with the customs of between-war English country living that I imagined I could have slipped inconspiciously into someone's Great Hall and fallen right in: languor from breakfast until tea, grog tray until seven, cocktails in the library, dinner at right, followed by the women retiring to the library while the men enjoy cigars and port in the dining room. Heaven can wait.

(And this only applies to fiction. The habits of the wilderness-era Churchill at Chartwell are something else I've committed to memory: from six a.m. breakfast brought to him by his valet to the manic late-night composition of his books and speeches.)

So it was hard, during the first hour anyway, to view a movie like Atonement without something approaching inter-generational jealousy, so fixated was I with the interior design, the clothes, the position of the chaise lounges by the pool, the--best of all--strange privacy such a large house and grounds would allow (the limiations of which privacy produce the two gut-wrenching moments in the film's first hour).

But, separating my own prejudices from the film itself, the first hour of Atonement left me spellbound, which response was so much bound up in one recurring image: the face of Saoirse Ronan, as 13 year-old Briony, whose stare out her second-floor window, then into the library, then into the darkness, will remain the enduring motif of this film long after people have forgotten the specifics of why exactly Keira Knightly jumped into the pond, or what exactly the twins were up to. What did Matthew Broderick sing to Uma Thurman in The Producers? "That face, that face . . ."

Saorise's Ronan's face--indicative of what Briony sees, and how she reacts to it-- is the story of the movie's first hour.

Which brings me to the second hour.

Was I alone in thinking, What the hell is going on here? I could give myself over to Robbie's (actor James McAvoy's) desperation in the hopeless first English assault in France, the one that ended in near-catastrophy in Dunkirk, before the evacuation that has never, in my mind, been given its due on film (even this one). I could understand Robbie's pain at seeing Cecilia after 3 1/2 years, and the hopelessness of the Allied defense against the first surge of the Third Reich, and the trying circumstances of volunteer nurses in dealing with the horrors of the battlefield, but damnit . . . where is this all going?

The second hour of the film has--what?--five flashbacks, two flashforwards, and (apologies to Chevy Chase's Funny Farm) one flash-sideways. And I don't know if I was alone in thinking: Okay, this is compelling, and this is compelling, and this is compelling . . . but where the hell are we going?

One other thing. Romola Garni, God love her, does not carry the mail as the 18 year-old Briony. The reason here is her face, which lacks the intensity and--let's face it--the beauty of Ronan's. The fact that Darni doesn't look at all like Ronan (four years can be a long time to a girl, but not long enough to grow a cleft chin) is the least of it. Part of the heartbreaking quality of young Briony is the sense that she will, at the age of majority, be a stunner; that Cecilia will win Robbie merely by the accident of earlier birth, like an older son inheriting the family manse. This is a promise that Ronan doesn't deliver. Part of the tension in the film's second half is the 15-20 minutes we spend waiting to see how Briony turned out; and when she is finally revealed, with the blocking equivalent of a drum roll, the reaction is . . . Oh, you. I was reminded of Ally Sheedy at the end of The Breakfast Club, who was supposed to be revealed as a secret beauty at the end, but who instead received (courtesy of Molly Ringwald) as having her face washed of its personality. This hurt.

And then . . . and then, the last five minutes did the impossible, and made the entire previous hour not only explicable, but wrenching. All is forgiven.

NFL Final Four Set

Surprise of the season: San Diego--without Antonio Gates, without LDT or Phil Rivers for much of the second half, and (most impressively) with Norv Turner as their head coach--defeated the Colts 28-24 to advance to the AFC Championship in Foxborough.

Meanwhile . . . thirty-one seconds left. Giants over Dallas by four.

Update: Wow. I'm almost glad school starts tomorrow; I'm about to save myself from a week of listening to the entire state of Texas (including certain quarters of Houston) rag on Tony Romo. He may not have had a choice, but Giants cornerback McQuarters would have had to duck in the end zone to have that pass miss him.

Pats v. Bolts; Giants v. Packers.

Life with Astro-Girl

On our TV screen, this graphic, courtesy of "Sportscenter":

"Gates to have toe tested at the game."

Astrogirl: "They're testing people's toes at the gates? Hasn't this 9/11 thing gone too far?"

Patriots 31, Jaguars 20

Quick thoughts:

*See how long it goes, but the Pats' are starting to resemble the 98-99 Yankees, in that they're starting to win close games the same way. Those Yanks had strong enough starting pitching to keep them in most games, timely hitting from the fifth inning on, and a suffocating bullpen anchored by Rivera. The Pats have Brady, who keeps the them close enough even when the opposition is scoring early; a smart and opportunistic (if aging) defense that forces the other team to grind everything out; and a knack on both sides of the ball for that one killer, fourth-quarter play. Brady to Watson (the seocnd time) was one dagger; Harrison's interception was, on defense, like the knock-out blow you keep expecting that finally comes. New England's D came within a few inches intercepting Garrard earlier; when Harrison hauled one in, it had the smack of the inevitable.

*Much was made, before and during the game, of the Jaguars' "ball control," their so-called ability to keep the Pats' offense off the field and mile the clock. Be careful of your strategy! The Jags did keep Brady on the sidelines (for awhile, it seemed as though the Pats would be the very first team in NFL history to lose without either turning the ball over or punting once--think about it), but in the end this was more a matter of necessity than strategy. It was clear early on that the Pats' would allow the Jags all sorts of underneath stuff, even on third down, in order to prevent anything deep. (It is telling that Garrard's one long completion came on fourth down, and on a broken play, when a Jags receiver seemed to appear trailing a puff of smoke behind him.) Once the Patriots went ahead by 11, the Jags' grind-it-out strategy was not only obsolete, it was counterproductive. No one, with the possible exception of Bill Parcells, understands the nuances of the clock as well as Bill Belichick, and when the fourth quarter went below ten minutes Belickick must have realized the game was all but over. It is one thing to milk the clock when you want to; yet another when you have no other choice. With Brady near-flawless, could the Jags drive the length of the field twice? Unlikely--and with the Pats (as they were against Eli last week) suddenly comfortable blitzing, impossible.

*That said, this Jags team is a comer. Consider the poor Houston Texans. As of 4 pm ET last Sunday, five teams remained in the playoffs. Three were from the AFC South: Indy, Jacksonville, Tennessee. Furthermore, injuries aside, the Texans will now have two games apiece, every season, vs. Peyton Manning, Vince Young, and David Garrard. What will count as in-division success? 3-3? 2-4?

My next day

Exhausted! So go figure.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Exhausted.

The number one rule of blogging is, "Blog for yourself first." The number one rule of writing is always, "Never bore yourself." Keeping both of these maxims in mind, when what I was writing became too much of a task, too much like homework, I simply stopped and moved on to the next thing, or laid everything aside until something interesting happened, and then started writing again.

That said, I was--still am--fired up for this Presidential campaign. Politics for the sake of politics is something that grabbed ahold of me when I was seven, wearing my "Nixon Now" button to school on election day, which button I won for being a "good listener" when some seventy-ish woman came by our class a ffew days before the Nixon-McGovern tilt armed with oil prints she unveiled, one at a time, to show us first the Pilgrims, then the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. (It occurred to me then--and does now--that she rather skipped over the intervening 150 years, merely telling us that "As time went on, soon they (the Pilgrims, I guessed) gave way to their children and grandchildren." Any explanation in a storm.) At the conclusion of her talk, she said she'd brought some buttons, one for each student the teacher identified as "good listeners." I had come armed to this talk with some vague notion of the Revolutionary War and Thanksgiving (first grade had been in the suburbs of Boston, where one invariably choked on William Bradford and Miles Standish every November), but had--I suppose--sat spellbound for the entire hour. Still, it was with some surprise that Mrs. Chapman singled me out in front of the rest: "I think Joseph McDade was a good listener." Ordinarily, I would take this approbation as a badge of dishonor--my true aspiration was to be the class cut-up, a role I was to play to much acclaim in later years--but, c'mon: Nixon Now!

This past week, I was with much anticipation I awaited Iowa, then New Hampshire, thinking I'd type all night, at least to have my own record of the first election since 1928 in which neither a sitting President nor Vice-President is running. I planned Hillary skin-crawl moments (the manic smile, the cackle). I planned John Edwards drinking games (one shot for "mill," one for "Americas," plural). I wanted to bathe in the MSM's effort to prop up Mike Huckabee as the most likely GOPer to fall to Obama in November. I wanted, I wanted . . . .

Then reality intervened:

1) Santa Semester. One three-hour class in the morning, another at night. And how was your vacation? Short but lucrative.

2) The marathon. As in Houston, January 13, training for, me. With a huge assist from a sister-in-law. Problem is: once you train past ten miles, your weekly One Long Run becomes something requiring three days advance warning, in bed by ten . . . jump your distance, at intervals, to 14, 16, 18, then 20 miles, and, really, three days for every week are spoken for. The day before you run you eat, rest, and eat some more, and then sleep early. On run day you run. The day after you run you feel like crap, and recover. The day after that you catch up with your life. Blah blah.

3) The sharp shooting pain in my side that cropped up five days before the marathon (the complex term I'm searching for is "yesterday"), which pain may be a pull or a strain but certainly disrupted my life. Too much training? A bad spill? Muscles ribbing from my rib cage? Emily Dickinson wrote about pain knowing no universe but itself; in such a climate my books, my papers, my care about politics and sports were all set aside against the groaning effort necessary to hoist myself to a sitting position, and thence to the bathroom. Postpone the race? (My participation, until next year.) We shall see.

So, in the face of exhaustion, the world parades by, uncommented by me, for me. USC wins Rose Bowl! Steelers eliminated! Celtics 29-3! Roger Clemens . . . oh, I'm too tired. Goose Gossage enters Hall (aside from that Rose Bowl, the most gratifying moment of the past two weeks)! Cinco Paul--in a creative, strike-inspired outburst--writes Bubble Boy: The Musical!

Nine thousand movies open!

And Obama, Hill, Huck, Mitt, Mac, Fred and the Silky Pony make the first of the year so gratifying!


Oh, I'm going to bed.

Hillary Lives!

Looks like she's going to eak out in New Hampshire.

Then she'll win in Michigan.

Obama wins in South Carolina.

Hillary in Florida.

Then . . . Superduper Tuesday.

Meanwhile, McCain takes NH for the GOP, and I haven't the slightest idea.

More Hillary

On the eve of Iowa, I come down (per the Dems) with the last few pieces I read this evening: namely, that 1) Obama is in for a big win in New Hampshire, maybe double, digits, but b) Hillary's chances are no worse than, say, 60-40 against.

Much of this has to do with January--really, the only three weeks in the primary season that anyone can play catch up. Hillary--whose campaign is reeling, but who has yet to draw a stupid breath--realized that going negative against Obama in the space between Iowa and New Hampshire would have no effect, or worse, would backfire.

So tomorrow, Hillary loses. And then the fun starts--as in fun that will make "Muslim" and "drug dealer" look like child's play.

If Hillary is alive on February 5th, she has a real chance, and Obama will be in trouble.

Meanwhile, we have tomorrow--one of my favorite nights of any four years--and we have my latest pleasure in life, the Hillary Deathwatch, the best sample of which was provided by Howie Carr:

Did you see the people standing behind Hillary in Iowa on Thursday night during her concession speech?

Wesley Clark, Madeleine Albright, Terry McAuliffe - it looked like a new exhibit at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. The Clinton theme song has gone from “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” to “Yesterday.”

There is nothing more out than last season’s fad. Wait 20 years, everything comes back. Just don’t try to wear it to the cotillion this year. But that’s exactly what Hillary has been doing, and Friday night she was booed when she told the 3,000 Democrat hacks in Milford, N.H., that she would always be working for “change for you.”

Keep using that line, Hillary, and you will be working for change. Spare change.

If they only had more time, the Clintons could dig up dirt, some real mud, to throw at Obama. But this yearthey’re reduced to using ham-handed fools like Billy Shaheen and Bob Kerrey to peddle half-baked lies about Muslims and cocaine dealing. And now the clock works against them. It was the Clintons who wanted to front-load everything, to hold those early caucuses in Nevada and then get all the primaries over with. There’s an old saying: Be careful what you wish for.

That's how things stand now.

Wednesday, maybe not.

More Iowa

To recapitulate:

What I'm looking forward to--completely looking forward to, just for fun's sake--is how the Clintons play this the next few weeks.

If the ant-Obama rhetoric/ads don't start coming every hour, on the hour, I'll be stunned.

A cynic might contrast the tone of Obama's speech with the rogue's gallery set up behind Hillary: Wes Clark, Madeline Albright, Bob "Hussein" Kerrey, and the Red-Faced Scoundrel himself, the bunch of them resemblng the police line-up in "The Usual Suspects."

A CYNIC might make the above contrast, but not me. (See? Look for a dozen verbal Clinton loop-de-loops like the above between now and, oh, the end of February, by which time they will be either unecessary or useless.)

Astro-Girl is a solid McCain supporter (I'm registered GOP), but midway through Obama's speech she asked, "You know who he reminds me of?"

I asked, "Jesse Jackson?"

"No."

Me (lightbulb on): "Martin Luther King."

"Bingo."

Iowa

It was over right after it started, and so all hope of live-blogging sort of went out the window.

To go down the winners and losers:

WINNERS:

1. Barack Obama. Of course.

In one of my twenty favorite movies ever, Miller's Crossing, Gabriel Byrne, playing a kind of Irish consiglerie to Albert Finney's combination of Boss Tweed and a Hibernian Al Capone, says this to his boss:

The only reason you run this town is that people think you run it. If they stop thinkin' it, you stop runnin' it.

This quote, in a nutshell, has been the coal in Hillary Clinton's engine for going on two years: her inevitability. She was going to win because everyone assumed she would win; any doubts, any other candidates, were buried under leads that stretched into the 20s and 30s.

Edwards, with that haircut and craptacular mansion, was a living joke. Biden had the taint of being humiliated by Bush over Roberts and Alito. Obama . . . well, when the Obama boomlet was one of the few bright spots for the Dems in 2004, I remember thinking that maybe the Dems should let Obama find the Men's room in the Russell Building before anointing him the savior of the party.

Well, three years later, it appears Obama has found the loo, and a whole lot more.

2. Mike Huckabee. Now comes the hard part. The difference between Huckabee and Obama is that Huck wins with all the demographics going his way (rural Evangelicals), and Obama wins with all his demos against him (2% black population, no dense urban population, plus Iowa is right-to-work albeit the most unionized of such a state). But, in the words of the old football coach Darryl Rogers, W's are W's and L's are L's. Huck has probably bought himself enough time (and potentially enough money) to last the month, or at least until the campaign turns south and the evangelical vote comes back into play. South Carolina, anyone?

3. John McCain Did just well enough to bolster himself in New Hampshire. But he's gotta win in New Hampshire.

4. The Democrats. Visibly more vocal, more enthused, more present than the GOP. A trend? Maybe.

LOSERS:

1. John Edwards. Worse night than Romney's only because money is a concern, and because Romney may yet recover in New Hampshire. Edwards has essentially been living in Iowa for a year; this was the political equivalent of all-in, and Obama caught two runners. In a way that several candidates who did not as well as he:

2. Mitt Romney. Better night than Edwards' only because of the above. In five days, he could be toast.

3. Hillary Clinton.


We saw the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which began with Hillary grasping for an answer regarding driver's licenses for illegan aliens and ended with her apparatchik, William Shaheen, blowing himself straight out of a job (and hurting his boss in the process) by attempting a misdirection straight out of the Clinton playbook.

What is fascinating about Hillary's present bad patch (Bill appeared on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago to claim of course Hillary never expected to win in Iowa), is that the same Clinton strategems that worked so well for her husband are being replayed as a kind of crappy, straight-to-DVD sequel in which nothing works as before. Consider these strategems:

1. Demonize whenever you can. Last time, the Clintons' all-out assault on Newt Gingrich worked so well that a Newsweek cover dubbed him "The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas"--a full three weeks before Gingrich even took office. The Monica Lewinsky scandal brought about not one resignation but two: two Republicans Speakers that is, Gingrich and Robert Livingstone, after the first was successfully portrayed as a predatory obsessive leader of Hillary's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and the second as a hypocrite for having cheated on his wife.

This time? Obama supporter (and former Clinton friend) David Geffen called Hillary a liar--truthfully, and almost as an aside. It would have been forgotten as the mouthings of one more Hollywood blowhard had the Clintons not turned it into a four-day story by their insistence that Obama 1) denounce Geffen and 2) return the money Geffen helped raise. Clinton apparatchik Howard Wolfson referred to Geffen--absurdly and repeatedly--as Obama's "finance chairman," a total of five times on Chris Matthews alone until Matthews finally called him on it. Obama's camp wisely ignored Wolfson's demands for this and that, and most people (not one in a thousand of whom could pick David Geffen out of a police line-up) were left with the memory of Hillary being tagged a liar.

2. Send someone else to slime someone and arm him with a plausible reason. If Hillary ends up losing the nomination (and right now, I think she stands at about 45 percent), two moments may stand out: her mishandling of the driver's license question and her New Hampshire campaign chair Bill Shaheen's ten-thumbed attempt to dredge up Obama's drug use and--again absurdly, unless they have the goods--raise the spectre of Obama's drug-dealing.

The reasoning for Sheehan's smear--if we don't do it, the evil GOP will, after the nomination--is both familiar and self-revealing. Used to work, doesn't now.

NEITHER UP NOR DOWN:

1. Thompson and Rudy. Nothing changes. Thompson is as faded as he was a month ago; Rudy still pins all on Florida. Neither is going to win, so nothing changes.

2. The other Dems. Combined vote count in Iowa: 2 percent. Nuff said.